THE best-loved seaside resort in Britain could put up its “No Vacancies” signs to stop attracting deadbeats, drunks and drug addicts.

Blackpool council’s leader calls it “a refuge for the dispossessed” and says the situation is so serious people should be banned from moving to the town unless they have a job or home there.

Councillor Simon Blackburn warns that the popular holiday destination has welcomed the “dependency culture” in recent years. He has written to residents saying he cannot “stand by” and let Blackpool be seen as “a hapless victim of society’s ills”.

Mr Blackburn, 40, told them: “Essentially, we would be saying Blackpool is full and if people are planning on moving here, they need to think long and hard about securing accommodation, a job and means of entertaining themselves which do not negatively impact on the wider community.”

The council’s Labour leader said watching an episode of the Channel 4 series 999: What’s Your Emergency?, which was filmed in the town, and having to use public transport recently, had brought home the town’s problems.

It becomes an issue when we are fuelling a culture of dependency on the state, a dependency we are struggling to afford now, never mind in another 10 years’ time

Councillor Simon Blackburn

His letter said: “I am forced to wonder therefore, at what point we accepted that Blackpool was going to become a ­refuge for the dispossessed and the never-possessed?

“When did we simply accept that if people turned up here with both profound and enduring criminal records, major social problems, housing issues or poverty issues, we would scoop them up into our bosom and seek to fix them?

“It becomes an issue when we are fuelling a culture of dependency on the state, a dependency we are struggling to afford now, never mind in another 10 years’ time.” The father-of-three lives in the resort and works part-time for a charity. He has been the victim of street crime and his house has been burgled.

Mr Blackburn’s comments have won cross-party support. However, Jim Cullen, chief executive of Caritas Care in the North-west, which runs the charity Homeless in Blackpool, said: “What are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to leave people in need?”